Can his new CBS miniseries “Comanche Moon” shine as bright?
By Allen Barra Jan. 11, 2008 | All truly great westerns pretty much commit themselves to one of two themes: the dizzying promise of adventure for pioneers — let’s use Howard Hawks’ “Red River” as an obvious example — or nostalgia for the end of an era, as with “Shane.” (Only a handful of books and films, most notably the greatest of all western fictions, Thomas Berger’s “Little Big Man,” have managed to incorporate both themes.) Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Lonesome Dove” fits, though somewhat uneasily, into the latter category. McMurty’s two greatest characters, the grizzled Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, lament the passing of their Wild West and try to reclaim their youth with a cattle drive. What elevated McMurtry’s novel over countless pulps with similar sentiments was its insistence on telling a heroic saga without the haze of romantic myth. Or, as he explained in his memoir “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen” (1999), he wanted “Lonesome Dove” to “
